


Idle Town

by hopswheeler



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Anxiety, Bad Parenting, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Boys In Love, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 19:18:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20840666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopswheeler/pseuds/hopswheeler
Summary: High school graduation always felt like a million years away to Eddie Kaspbrak. Something that would never happen. But it did. And that windy May afternoon where he held onto his graduation cap so tight, afraid it would blow away, bled into sun filled days filled with hearty laughter. Summer. Always tinted yellow at the edges. Sharp in experience but grainy and nostalgic in memory.Then September came. And with it, the packing up of childhood belongings into boxes, tearful goodbyes and dust rising up in the air from cars driving away a little too fast. Friends, eager to leave Derry in their rearview mirror, not realizing that it was Eddie they were leaving behind too. His mother's grip on him tight as ever, patting him on the hand last winter; "Eddie bear, I think you need to stay behind for a year after graduation. I'm not sure you're ready for college. You're so fragile and it could break you. You wouldn't want that, now would you?"So maybe high school graduation had never really felt all that far away. Maybe Eddie just wished it had been. Because he's sure that being stuck in this idle town, with nobody else but Richie Tozier to keep him company, is pretty much the worst thing that's ever happened to him.





	Idle Town

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is my first work on here so go easy on me! I'm not sure how long this fic will be yet, I'm thinking maybe somewhere around 20 chapters but I don't want to limit myself before I even get started. This story has been inside of me for a while now, just itching to be told. I hope you like her just as much as I do. 
> 
> The official playlist:  
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/01ne3acU4h85FsFQfVCwfm?si=jcJC-UszTZyCMsr_R_xikw

September 4, 1994. 

It's unusually cold for September in Maine this year. The wind harsh, uninviting and teetering on the edge of downright painful. The sun disappeared two days ago and hasn't made a reappearance since. Eddie think it's a sign. A sign that life will be nothing but grey skies and bitter cold until Bev and Stan come back home. 

Beverly Marsh and Stanley Uris. Eddie's two very best friends in the entire world. Well, his only two friends in the entire world. But still, they're good ones. Bev took Eddie under her wing the very first day of kindergarten, after noticing him standing all alone in a distant corner of the playground. She marched up to him, red hair blowing in a million different directions, and slung an arm around his shoulder. 

"Let's go on the swings together" she said, an easy grin on her lips. 

"O-okay" he managed to stutter out. 

And they had been best friends ever since. Stan joined the duo after moving to Derry in the third grade, his quiet and logical demeanor a welcome balance to Eddie's constant nervous energy and Bev's tendency to hyper focus. It was always just the three of them and that's how Eddie liked it. They were all he needed to be happy. So, when Bev left for New York on the 24th of August and Stan for Connecticut only three days later, Eddie felt like a piece of his heart had been ripped out and stomped upon.

On Stan's last night in Derry, both boys sitting on the floor of Stan's packed up and bare bedroom, Eddie asked a question that had been pressing on the tip of his tongue for weeks. 

"Aren't you scared? You know, of leaving Derry and starting over?" 

Stan turned and looked at Eddie, a slight frown on his lips. 

"No. Eddie, starting over isn't always bad or scary. In fact, I think it's actually a great thing. And I don't think you'd be so scared if you just let yourself try." 

Eddie sighed at his words, knowing exactly where the conversation was about to lead. 

"Look, Eddie. It's probably not too late to apply to University of Maine. I'm sure they'll accept you, if you just explain the situati-"

"Stan, I've told you over and over. I'm just not ready for college quite yet, but maybe in a year-"

"That's bullshit and you know it. You're ready to leave. Your mom is the only reason you're staying." Stan said, cutting Eddie off. 

Eddie said nothing in response, his mouth opening and closing a few times but no words coming out. Because he knew Stan was right. 

Eddie's mom. The reason he feels inexplicably tied to Derry. When he was seven years old, she gave him an inhaler and a bottle of pills for the first time. She told him he was sick and these would help him to get better. And in that moment he knew. He knew that Derry's thick ivy branches had snaked their way around his legs and dragged him partway into the earth, leaving him a permanent part of the landscape. Derry is his mother. His mother is Derry. They are in many ways, one and the same. And a small part of him knows that leaving Derry, leaving his mother, will be the hardest thing he'll ever do. 

And he isn't ready for that yet. So, he watches Stan and Bev leave on the road towards their futures. He swallows pills everyday that he's pretty sure are bullshit. His inhaler remains in his pocket at all times, a safety precaution that has nearly become a personality trait at this point. He kisses his mom on the cheek each night before bed. And when she asks him to get a job to "help support their income" though she herself hasn't worked in months, he agrees. 

So that's how he finds himself standing outside of Mel's Diner at 10 am on a Friday morning, a week after his friends have left town, braving the harsh Maine wind. He looks down at the crumpled yellow paper in his hands and tries desperately to smooth out the edges, hoping it will quell the pit of anxiety in his stomach. 

Help Wanted. Experience preferred but not necessary, it reads. The paper sat on his dresser for two full days before he finally got the courage to give the diner a call and ask for an interview. He'd known that he was being over the top in his fear, palms sweaty and pacing around his room endlessly for those forty eight torturous hours. But the thing was, Eddie had never been to a job interview. He'd never had a job, period. 

What kind of questions would he be asked in the interview? Would the job be too much for him to handle? What if his boss and his coworkers hated him? 

The only thing that had finally pushed him to make the stupid call was his annoyance at his mom's constant presence. She was everywhere. There in the morning when he woke up, reminding him to take his medication. There in the afternoon, telling him he looked exhausted and should take a quick little nap. There in the evening, frowning and reminding him to eat his brussel sprouts. 

She was suffocating him. 

And it's with this thought that Eddie finally swings open the front door to Mel's, a bell ringing lightly above his head as he takes in the scene in front of him. Cherry red booths with the plastic ripping slightly at the edges, white tiled floor that he's certain has never been fully clean and soft jazz music playing from an unidentifiable source. Only a few people are in the diner, mostly older couples eating a late breakfast and a few people around his mom's age, reading newspapers. 

He takes in a deep breath and walks nervously forward, looking for the manager he’d talked to over the phone. Eddie knows that she’s a woman and her name is Karen. And that’s pretty much about it. He wanders over to the counter, surprised to see not a single worker in sight. 

They must be seriously understaffed, he thinks to himself. 

Eddie picks up one of the spare menus and flicks it open, slowly turning the pages as his eyes glaze over the menu. He frowns slightly as he reads the options. 

Hamburgers, fries, waffles, milkshakes, bacon, hot dogs... 

It all sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen. At even just the thought of a heart attack, Eddie feels his palms get a little clammier and his breath catch in his throat. He decides right then and there that he will most certainly not be eating at Mel’s, even if he somehow miraculously gets the job. 

“Um, can I help you?” a voice says from behind Eddie, interrupting his terrifying thoughts of clogged arteries and hospital beds.

Eddie whips his head around after quickly putting the menu back where he found it, hoping he didn’t disturb anything. 

“Sorry, I was just-” Eddie’s voice tapers off as his eyes meet a very familiar face, a face he wasn’t expecting to see. 

Richie Tozier. Richie Tozier who seems to recognize Eddie too, if the slight smirk that’s spreading across his face says anything. 

Eddie’s technically known Richie just as long as he’s known Bev, the three of them having all been in the same kindergarten class, yet he hardly knows the boy at all. He sometimes finds that odd, but he also thinks that if it had been Richie instead of Bev who offered to play with him that one fateful day on the playground, he would’ve said no. 

Richie was loud and obnoxious and rough around the edges, even as a six year old. Eddie was none of those things and he decided he was scared of Richie, of his brash confidence and light laugh, the very first day he met him. And that never changed. All the way through middle school and high school, Richie was this entity all of his own. Yes, the boy could talk anybody’s ear off but the only people he ever truly hung out with were Bill Denbrough, Mike Hanlon and Ben Hascom. And while he was often annoying in class and liked to push people’s buttons just because he could, he never seemed to face any repercussions for it. He was an enigma and paradoxical and he never made any sense to Eddie. Richie was a boy seemingly unaffected by anything, living in his own bubble where no one could ever reach him. Always laughing, always smiling, always joking. 

And since Eddie was none of those things, he kind of hated him for it. 

So the next words out of his mouth, accompanied with a deep sigh, are, “What do you want, Richie?” 

Richie puts a hand across his heart, feigning deep hurt. 

“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. That’s no way to talk to your future coworker” he says, a deep smile spreading on his features.

Eddie feels the blood drain from his face as he takes a step back in surprise.

“The interview. That is what you’re here for, right?” Richie asks, his smile never faltering. 

“Well, yeah. But how did you even know that?” Eddie asks, smoothing his hands over his pants nervously as he attempts to regain his composure. 

“Karen’s out of town for the day and told me some kid around my age was going to come in for an interview and that I had to ask them questions or whatever. So, unless you’re not here for the interview and want to eat some pancakes or something, we should go ahead and get started” Richie says, looking down at his nails, as if he’s already getting bored of the conversation. 

“Ok, let’s say I am the person you’re supposed to interview. Are you even qualified to do that?” Eddie asks, narrowing his eyes at Richie’s lanky figure. 

“I’ve been working here for over a year, Kaspbrak. Now, can we please just get started? I’m aging by the second here. By the time we finally start this interview, I’ll be as old as them” Richie says, pointing to the elderly couple in the far left corner. 

“Don’t point at people! That’s so rude” Eddie says through gritted teeth. 

As the words fly past his lips, he becomes painfully aware that 1) he’s maybe being a little too rude, 2) he’s coming off as extremely uptight and 3) he’s pretty sure he’s never been this close to Richie before and it’s very, very weird. 

Richie simply laughs in response, his sides shaking at the sight of anger on Eddie’s face. 

-  
“Have you ever committed a felony?” 

Eddie sighs deeply at this question and at the playful smile on Richie’s face as he asks it. 

“You already looked at my permanent record, Richie. Don’t you think that a felony, of all things, would be on there?” 

“Well Eddie, your record is clean. Suspiciously clean. So clean that I figure you have to be hiding something, you’re just not telling me about it” Richie says, adjusting his glasses as he does so. 

Eddie glares at him. 

“I’m not hiding anything. I just happen to have an extremely overprotective mother who would kill me if I ever so much as got a detention” he says with a huff. 

Richie nods at that, looking thoughtful for just a moment, before grinning mischievously once again. 

“Alright then, Eddie. I guess you’re a mystery and I’ll just have to figure you out” he says, wiggling his eyebrows obnoxiously and smirking. 

Eddie squirms uncomfortably in his seat, though he knows Richie is just joking. 

“Can we get on with the rest of the questions?” he asks. 

-

After at least twenty more obnoxious and intrusive questions from Richie, they finish the interview, much to the relief of Eddie. 

They both push themselves up from the booth they had been sitting at and make their way over to the front door. 

“So, when will I know if I got the job?” Eddie asks, hoping the nerves he feels aren’t too obvious in his voice. 

“Oh, yeah. That. You got it” Richie says, shrugging his shoulders as if it’s the most casual thing in the world. 

“Wait, what? You haven’t talked it over with Karen yet!” Eddie exclaims with a furrowed brow.

“Well, here’s the thing. She actually told me I could hire you as long as you showed up today. We really need more people around here, clearly. So, you were already pretty much guaranteed the position once you walked through that door.”

“So you’re telling me that the whole 25 minute long interview we just did was for nothing? We didn’t even have to do it?” Eddie asks, feeling irritation rise up in him. 

Richie grins down at him and for the first time Eddie notices that their height difference is well, very apparent. Richie must have at least five inches on him and this makes Eddie feel even more irritated than before.

“Well Eddie, that was just for kicks. I don’t think we’ve ever talked that much in our lives. It was kinda fun, right?” he asks, elbowing Eddie in the side. 

“Yeah, very fun” Eddie deadpans, his glare not leaving. 

“Well, you can start on Monday. You’ll have to do some job training first, of course. If you’re lucky, Karen will have me do it” Richie says, speaking in a horrible British accent and chuckling at himself. 

“Um, okay. I-I’ll see you later” Eddie manages to get out as he feels his cheeks flush at the thought of spending that much time with Richie, this boy he hardly knows. 

Richie opens his mouth, likely ready to say something else irritating but Eddie doesn’t give him the chance. 

He pushes his body out the door and back into the chilly Maine afternoon, without a second glance back.

The harsh wind had felt like a slap in the face earlier but Eddie welcomes it now. It’s a nice contrast in comparison to the diner. The diner had felt hot and stuffy and way too full. Full of Richie Tozier. Every particle in the place buzzing with his overwhelming presence. 

Annoying, annoying, annoying, Eddie thinks. 

It was definitely going to be a long few months without Bev and Stan. Especially if he was going to be forced to spend so much time with Richie, of all people. 

Richie with his messy mop of slightly curly hair, wide brown eyes hidden behind thick glasses and a gangly, tall stature that seemed to be all legs and nothing else. 

Feeling the leaves crackle underneath his feet and the temperature drop rapidly on his walk home, Eddie can’t seem to think of anything but Richie’s grinning face and it fills him with pure agitation. 

Annoying, annoying, annoying indeed.


End file.
